APC can’t live or breathe without intrigues

IT took extensive intrigues in February for the APC National Executive Committee (NEC) to suddenly propose and approve a two-year tenure extension for its functionaries, the main beneficiaries being party executives at national, state, local government and ward levels. The ostensible explanation was that, given the existing rifts within the party, it would be both acrimonious and disastrous for the party, less than a year before the next polls, to kick-start the process of electing new party officials. It is true that the party is riven by various interests and conflicting forces and groups, some of them so strong and so independent that they have become unmanageable and invincible. Since many party leaders knew that congresses and convention would virtually determine their survival in the party, it was reasoned that a fight to the death could ensue. To avert that apocalyptic scenario, and obviously to keep their gains untouched by any fancy political or strategic foot work, officials devised the bright idea to flout their own and the country’s constitutions to retain their little fiefdoms.

But last week, just like the tenure extension proposal popped up suddenly, a bright idea to defeat the proposal, this time inspired by President Muhammadu Buhari, also suddenly came up. The president’s position was anchored on the law and the constitution. At the follow-up NEC meeting, and in the presence of confident and exulting proponents of extension, the president brutally burst the bubble of those who had positioned themselves and their supporters to benefit from the extension. The uproar was intense, and the arguments bitter and implacable. Clearly, the battle is by no means over, for regardless of the law and the constitution, there are many forces in the party who have set great store by the extension, and who would do anything to sustain their advantageous positions.

APC watchers are not surprised that the party is polarised, or that the schisms seem to follow a roughly pro- and anti-Bola Tinubu line, or that the leading legal arguments were advocated by south-westerners who have squirmed over their relationship with Asiwaju Tinubu, or that the extension advocates would do anything to win the argument in order to cement the rebellion they fomented in the party shortly after the 2015 polls. The campaign for extension may be painted in altruistic colours, but in reality the pro-extension forces tire of the rigour, discipline and leadership exemplified by the depleted Tinubu forces. In late February, the pro-extension forces fired the first shot. Last week, they suffered unexpected reverses. They will not give up until the battle is fully joined in the coming weeks, for they have already sounded the battle cry and are eager to break out in open rebellion against the president’s superior legal arguments.

Some three years ago, the PDP expired under a hail of intrigues, and the APC coolly and calmly walked in and picked up the pieces. But, comparatively, it is debatable whether the PDP was in those years capable of the intensity, variety and volume of intrigues that today swaddle the APC. Neither the president nor Asiwaju Tinubu should imagine that the last shots have been fired. The heavy guns will be rolled out soon. It is rumoured that some party leaders might be inclined to enthroning former Edo governor, Adamas Oshiomhole, as the new party chairman, assuming the party can safely deliver the convention. Mr Oshiomhole is neither the radical and revolutionary his background presupposes, nor the intellectual and progressive his political trajectory implies. He is a natural and instinctive establishment man who will always do the bidding of the president, regardless of his boisterousness and workaholism.

Though the pro-extension forces can always become turncoats and find a new champion, even if that champion has to be the inventive and prodigious improviser, Mr Oshiomhole, there will be no end to the intrigues convulsing the ruling party. This anomaly had to do with the party’s eclectic beginnings, its formation on the Ouija board of disparate, rebellious, unstable, insatiable and aggressive politicians. They live and breathe intrigues. They cannot imagine any other existence outside their petty rivalries, for rivalry, scheming and plotting are the air they breathe. The president has spoken law, Asiwaju Tinubu has spoken party discipline, and Mr Odgie-Oyegun has spoken the suzerainty of the party’s more numerous and fledgling regicides. Somehow, the country might just be witnessing the perfect lull before the storm.